Texts About Lowell Mill Girls

1834 Boston Transcript reports on the Strike

"We learn that extraordinary excitement was occasioned at Lowell, last week, by an
announcement that the wages paid in some of the departments would be reduced 15
percent on the 1st of March. The reduction principally affected the female operatives, and
they held several meetings, or caucuses, at which a young woman presided, who took an
active part in persuading her associates to give notice that they should quit the mills, and
to induce them to 'make a run' on the Lowell Bank and the Savings Bank, which they did.
On Friday morning, the young woman referred to was dismissed, by the Agent...and on
leaving the office...waved her calash in the air, as a signal to the others, who were
watching from the windows, when they immediately 'struck' and assembled about her, in
despite of the overseers.

"The number soon increased to nearly 800. A procession was formed, and they marched
about the town, to the amusement of a mob of idlers and boys, and we are sorry to add,
not altogether to the credit of Yankee girls....We are told that one of the leaders mounted
a stump and made a flaming Mary Wollstonecraft speech on the rights of women and the
iniquities of the 'monied aristocracy,' which produced a powerful effect on her auditors,
and they determined to 'have their way if they died for it.'"

Poem that Concluded Lowell Women Workers' 1834 Petition to the

Manufacturers

Let oppression shrug her shoulders,

And a haughty tyrant frown,
And little upstart Ignorance,
In mockery look down.
Yet I value not the feeble threats
Of Tories in disguise,
While the flag of Independence
O'er our noble nation flies.

1836 Song Lyrics Sung by Protesting Workers at Lowell

Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I

Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of liberty,
That I cannot be a slave.
 1)According to the Boston Transcript report, why had the workers gone out on
strike?
2) What form of activity had their protest taken? Was it like strikes among
predominantly male workers during the same period, or was it distinctive?
3) Why was their behavior, as the Boston Transcript stated it, "not altogether to
the credit of Yankee girls"? What is the significance of calling them "Yankee"?
4) Who was Mary Wollstonecraft, and why would the strikers sound like her to
the reporter?
 1) What sort of language is used in this poem? Is it the sort of language one might
expect of a mill worker? Is it the tone of a weak person speaking to a stronger
one? Why are certain words capitalized? Is there a consistent pattern at work
here?
2) Why did the mill workers end their strike petition with a poem? What would
the use of a poem show the mill owners about the workers as women?
3) What does this poem assume about those who will be reading the petition? Is it
a concrete demand, or is it a demand in principle?
4) What is the usual meaning of the term "Tories" in American history? Would
the term have a different meaning in 1834 than it did in 1776, and why might it?
What was the value of associating their strike demands with "the flag of
Independence"? Might independence have a new and particular meaning to these
mill workers in 1834 that it might not have had in 1776? Compare here, for
example, the "Song of the Spinners" and its use of the term "dependent." 4) The
mill workers also argued that they were "the daughters of free men." What exactly
would this mean in 1834? Compare the 1836 song the mill strikers sang, with the
lines, "I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave," with this statement.
1) How is the mill girl dressed? Does her clothing look like it is a uniform for drudgery?
2) What items is she carrying in her hands? What would be the significance of these
items? What does her carrying of those items mean to convey to those who see this
drawing?
3) Compare the factory behind the mill girl to the image of the Merrimack factory. What
is meant to be conveyed by both of these images about the factories? Are they merely
"realistic" representations of the buildings, or do they evoke a certain response in the
viewer?
4) Compare this image with the image from 1775 of Liberty on the cover of "The
Congress". Are there any similarities between the two images?
1) What does this image tell you about the women who worked in the mills? Why is
the date that this picture was taken significant? What does knowing the date add
to our knowledge about the women in it?
2) Compare this image to the drawing of a mill girl from the cover of the Lowell
Offering. What are the differences and similarities between the drawing and the
photo?
3) What is the significance of the setting of this photograph? After looking at the
two images together, would you have expected this image to have the factory in it
as well? Why might it not be?
4) What are the differences between ways we look at photographs and the ways
we look at drawings? Are they really the same sort of a document? Are there
parallels between the ways we look at one and the other?
1) What sort of a machine is this, and how is it presented in the drawing? Do you imagine
that this is a factual representation of the spaces in which mill girls worked?
2) Look at the clothing, haristyle, and posture of the woman working at the weaving
machine. What is meant to be conveyed by these characteristics? What sort of a woman
are we to believe the worker is? Compare this image to the Tintype of Two Woman
Weavers taken in 1860. To what might you attribute any differences or similarities
between the two images?
3) Imagine what the sounds of this machine might have been. How would working
conditions in this situation have compared with what these young women would have
been accustomed to before coming to the mills?
1) What do the lyrics of this song tell you about the values of the workers who sang it?
2) What do the lyrics tell you about the singers' attitudes about their work?
3) How do the lyrics use the word "dependent" here?
4) What is the "idle throng" the words refer to? What is the attitutde toward it represented
in the lyrics?
Modern History Sourcebook:
Harriet Robinson:
Lowell Mill Girls

In her autobiography, Harriet Hanson Robinson, the wife of a newspaper editor,

provided an account of her earlier life as female factory worker (from the age of ten in
1834 to 1848) in the textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Her account explains some of
the family dynamics involved, and lets us see the women as active participants in their
own lives - for instance in their strike of 1836.

In what follows, I shall confine myself to a description of factory life in Lowell,

Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1848, since, with that phase of Early Factory Labor in New
England, I am the most familiar-because I was a part of it.

In 1832, Lowell was little more than a factory village. Five "corporations" were started,
and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was in great demand and
stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that
were offered to all classes of workpeople; stories that reached the ears of mechanics' and
farmers' sons and glave new life to lonely and dependent women in distant towns and
farmhouses .... Troops of young girls came from different parts of New England, and
from Canada, and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver
them at the factories.

...

At the time the Lowell cotton mills were started the caste of the factory girl was the
lowest among the employments of women. In England and in France, particularly, great
injustice had been done to her real character. She was represented as subjected to
influences that must destroy her purity and selfrespect. In the eyes of her overseer she
was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched and pushed about. It was to overcome this
prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to
become millgirls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading
occupation....

The early millgirls were of different ages. Some were not over ten years old; a few were
in middle life, but the majority were between the ages of sixteen and twentyfive. The
very young girls were called "doffers." They "doffed," or took off, the full bobbins from
the spinningframes, and replaced them with empty ones. These mites worked about
fifteen minutes every hour and the rest of the time was their own. When the overseer was
kind they were allowed to read, knit, or go outside the millyard to play. They were paid
two dollars a week. The working hours of all the girls extended from five o'clock in the
morning until seven in the evening, with one halfhour each, for breakfast and dinner.
Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen hours a day. This was the
greatest hardship in the lives of these children. Several years later a tenhour law was
passed, but not until long after some of these little doffers were old enough to appear
before the legislative committee on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a
reduction of the hours of labor.

Those of the millgirls who had homes generally worked from eight to ten months in the
year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends. A few taught school during
the summer months. Their life in the factory was made pleasant to them. In those days
there was no need of advocating the doctrine of the proper relation between employer and
employed. Help was too valuable to be illtreated....

...

The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of education for some
male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a
college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of the better
class of millgirls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month
after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some
profession. I have known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known
women to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There are
many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early mill-
girls.

It is well to digress here a little, and speak of the influence the possession of money had
on the characters of some of these women. We can hardly realize what a change the
cotton factory made in the status of the working women. Hitherto woman had always
been a money saving rather than a money earning, member of the community. Her labor
could command but small return. If she worked out as servant, or "help," her wages were
from 50 cents to $1 .00 a week; or, if she went from house to house by the day to spin
and weave, or do tailoress work, she could get but 75 cents a week and her meals. As
teacher, her services were not in demand, and the arts, the professions, and even the
trades and industries, were nearly all closed to her.

As late as 1840 there were only seven vocations outside the home into which the women
of New England had entered. At this time woman had no property rights. A widow could
be left without her share of her husband's (or the family) property, an " incumbrance" to
his estate. A father could make his will without reference to his daughter's share of the
inheritance. He usually left her a home on the farm as long as she remained single. A
woman was not sup posed to be capable of spending her own, or of using other people's
money. In Massachusetts, before 1840, a woman could not, legally, be treasurer of her
own sewing society, unless some man were responsible for her. The law took no
cognizance of woman as a moneyspender. She was a ward, an appendage, a relict. Thus it
happened that if a woman did not choose to marry, or, when left a widow, to remarry, she
had no choice but to enter one of the few employments open to her, or to become a
burden on the charity of some relative.

...

One of the first strikes that ever took place in this country was in Lowell in 1836. When it
was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was
decided to strike or "turn out" en masse. This was done. The mills were shut down, and
the girls went from their several corporations in procession to the grove on Chapel Hill,
and listened to incendiary speeches from some early labor reformers.

One of the girls stood on a pump and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a
neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the
wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event
caused surprise and consternation among her audience

It is hardly necessary to say that, so far as practical results are concerned, this strike did
no good. The corporation would not come to terms. The girls were soon tired of holding
out, and they went back to their work at the reduced rate of wages. The illsuccess of this
early attempt at resistance on the part of the wage element seems to have made a
precedent for the issue of many succeeding strikes.

Harriet H. Robinson, "Early Factory Labor in New England," in Massachusetts Bureau of

Statistics of Labor, Fourteenth Annual Report (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1883), pp. 380-
82, 38788, 39192.